Late Godard Talk, ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Video Essay, Dennis Hopper’s Final Film, and More

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Albert Maysles, who died last week, was one of the great American filmmakers. His legacy is so immense and multifaceted that I can’t face trying to sum it up. I also knew him personally, as did a lot of documentarians and filmmakers, and held him in equally high regard as an artist and a man.

This post is not meant to substitute for a deep dive into his filmography, nor is it aimed at people who already know a lot about Maysles. It’s more of a grab-bag of impressions gleaned from watching the man’s films and speaking to him on occasion. Think of it as a series of caught moments.

A man, a woman, and a pair of stockings come together in an unforgettable sequence in the middle of The Soft Skin. After a stewardess and her lover, a well-known scholar, arrive in provincial Reims, where he’s to speak, she discovers a run in her only stockings. As he leaves to meet his host, she asks him to buy her another pair on his way back to their backstreet hotel. This will take some time, as he is swept up in the obligations of a “celebrity” visit, not least of which in this case is to tell his host to cancel the room in the luxury hotel reserved for him and his wife. Lies large and small accumulate. There are other people to meet, a lunch for local dignitaries and their wives.

Watch an extensive discussion of Jean-Luc Godard‘s recent career at TIFF:

While Iranian films have screened at festivals as early as 1958–Samuel Khachikian’s Party in Hell played in competition at the 8th Berlinale–few cinephiles engaged with these films as part of a national cinema. Abbas Kiarostami’s work changed that in the late 1980s, and the films of directors like Jafar Panahi and the Makhmalbaf family followed suit. Yet this newfound prominence on the international scene triggered little interest in the history of this national cinema.